This blog covered the surprise hit actioner John Wick.
Then I handed the wheel to you guys for John Wick: Chapter 2.
Keeping promises to my readers takes high priority, so without further ado, here’s your review of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum.
First, the title.
Man, these titles keep getting longer.
And that’s not the only place we see bloat creeping into this franchise.
As I pointed out in my first review – and as my readers agreed – the John Wick series’ crown jewel is the rich and deep underworld the film makers realized on screen.
A major element that sells this immersive secondary world is the existence of its own currency.
We’re not talking counterfeit bills or Bitcoin, either.
The gangsters populating John Wick’s criminal underworld use a system of tokens backed not by the government, or even the gold they’re made of, but the accumulated favors and street cred of the bearer.
For World of Darkness players, the gold coins from John Wick are pretty much physical representations of boons.
They were a touch of genius.
Then they added markers in Chapter 2, which made sense and was cool.
But in Chapter 3, we get the coins and the markers, plus crucifix “tickets”, sommelier medals, Adjudicator badges, and an actual mint’s worth of assorted tokens and coinage.
And the dude in charge of that mint makes a speech wherein he spoon feeds the audience the meaning behind those symbols.
Dude, the previous two movies already showed us what the symbols mean. No need to waste run time telling us.
That’s this movie’s main failing. It’s rife with unnecessary elements.
Prime example: Halle Berry’s grating “You go grrrl” virago who mistakes anger for a personality and constant grunting for dialogue.
She even has a pear of dogs she’s trained to bite men’s balls.
Her appearance is a testament to the John Wick series’ durability, though. Because Berry has a history of destroying franchises whose third installments she stars in.
OK, I started off in a more negative tone than intended. With the bad stuff out of the way, let’s talk about the good.
First, the action is as strong as ever. This series never disappoints on that front.
The hotel siege is particularly notable.
Wick’s battles with Zero, the assassin who has a “Notice me, sempai!” fanboy relationship with his target, is a ton of fun.
But the main problem with this movie is its meandering plot structure.
The first film introduced the gangster underworld.
The second brought in the concept of the High Table.
So the natural plot progression for the third installment would be an excommunicated John Wick hunting down and killing the Table.
The series up to this point has made the implied promise that we’ll see the Table’s members. That reveal should have taken place in John Wick 3.
Instead, John makes an end run around the Table to the ad hoc character of the Elder, who is almost a decade younger than Keanu Reeves.
So based on an almost-but-not-quite-sufficient justification, John reverses course, pledges fealty to the Table again, and goes off to do their dirty work.
Only to pull a third heel turn and end up right back where he started at the beginning of this movie, necessitating the next one.
That’s a sure sign of writers who painted themselves into a corner and didn’t know how to wrap up a story. So they punted.
Avoid the same pitfall in your writing.
Hire me to take your book from 3 stars to 5 stars.
The biggest problem with the movie is that it is entirely disposable. If you skipped from 2 to whatever the final instalment is (Hopefully 4, but that’s looking doubtful) you will miss absolutely nothing of consequence. Nothing really happens in this movie.
That said, it is exciting, but most people I talk to about it get bored of it about two thirds of the way through the movie. It should have focused on wrapping up the plot instead of meandering for more random actions sequences. I’m sad they got Mark Dacascos for a pretty cool action scene that was entirely pointless for the story. Hoping they don’t do the same to Scott Adkins in 4.
But again, I’m trepidatious about it. I’m hoping they are not planning to stretch it out again to get the fifth instalment. At this rate we’re going to need a fan edit like the Hobbit movies got to cut down everything after 2 into one movie.
A John Wick supercut would be nice.
John Wick is a film that didn’t need sequel, let alone a series or an expanded universe. But we got one anyways. And there’s another one coming.
Sigh
I don’t know if I’ll watch 4. I have Wick fatigue.
I stopped after part 2. I hate how it over explained the criminal underworld. Plus, the action sequences were too repetitive. It felt like a montage and nothing was at stake anymore. The scenes where 3 Wick fights were intercut deflated tension.
I’ve yet to see the first one, so I might not have the proper context to judge 3. But the first part of the movie seemed by far the strongest, plot wise (the best action is probably towards the end.) John Wick’s violation of the crime world’s rules was painted as a death sentence in the second movie and the beginning of the 3rd did a good job of selling that, especially when people who give him even very minor aid suffer for it.
But by the time he reaches Halle Berry, the feeling of danger has dramatically dissipated. The encounter with the Elder should be some kind of turning point: Wick has accepted that he cannot exist outside of the secret society of criminals, and has sold his soul to continue to persist. That could have been a fitting (if dark) end to the story as a whole, and should have at least been his establishing character moment for THIS movie. But he goes back on his pledge at literally the first opportunity, which in turn could have been interesting if he had followed through by gathering his allies to overthrow the table. But the final betrayal eliminated that possibility, and really puts things back to square one: everyone against Wick, with his only hope for survival being to scrape together what few favors and allies he has left.
A hint, and another implied promise, comes from Winston when he responds to the Adjudicator’s threat from the Table with “We’re New York.”